“They asked about the new caravan and if word had gotten out about how difficult it is to seek asylum in the U.S.,” Drehsler said. “Then before I left, the female agent asked if I rented or owned my home.”
This sounds much more like a political intimidation operation than serving a national security purpose.
This is obviously happening more and more. High profile cases like journalists and activists caught up in association with Snowden, like Greenwald, Poitras and Lavabit's founder... Are probably known to most here. But I wonder if most are aware even a journalist covering the dakota pipeline protests was detained by the US government(1).
1-https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/business/media/canadian-j...
So if you want to retain your civil rights in America, you either can't cover protests, or can't travel to the Middle East. Or both.
Anyways, who on earth is downvoting my parent comment??
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/01...
Our global political landscape must radically improve for humanity's sake. It seems that every government, particularly the 'western' ones are racing headlong into outright facism: all because of political and corporate maneuvering.
https://www.thenation.com/article/ice-immigration-protest-sp...
A quote directly from the article sums up the counterpoint nicely:
“We are a criminal investigation agency, we’re not an intelligence agency,” the Homeland Security source told NBC 7 Investigates. “We can’t create dossiers on people and they’re creating dossiers. This is an abuse of the Border Search Authority.”
"CBP told our colleagues at NBC News that the names in the database are all people who were present during violence that broke out at the border in November. The agency also said journalists are being tracked so that the agency can learn more about what started that violence."
Suddenly? No. This is the inevitable result of the normalization of authoritarianism, militarism and mass surveillance that began after 9/11.
I mean, we have a President who outright calls the press enemies of the people, and half the country agrees with him, and most of the rest just dismiss it as Trump being an angry crazy man. That's how far the Overton window has been pushed towards protofascism in the US.
To me it just seems like a way to harass and disrupt journalists trying to closely cover the story.
Messing with the press will always be construed as intimidation. Means to an end. And rightfully so. So as the government; just don't do it. Don't even think about it. The press doing their job is the turning point in the feedback loop that makes democracy work.
The first amendment protects the press, as well as the people's right "...to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The whole "keep tabs on journalists to learn more about the violence that journalists didn't contribute too" is a strawman argument, and a fairly obvious boot-licking one at that.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/01/29/sharyl_at...
Further facts include that the president has lied about the migrant caravan in question as a way to win political support by claiming it contains middle eastern terrorist elements, and diseases like smallpox and leprosy which will be spread to Americans.
Now we learn that journalists covering the caravan are facing undue scrutiny by border agents and are being tracked and you want to simply dismiss the context?
So that you do not misunderstand, I'm not saying that any of this excuses Khashoggi's murder. I'm saying that it's disingenuous to suggest that those who ordered his killing were motivated be some sort of generalized antipathy to journalism.
I'm not saying those who ordered his killing did so because he was a journalist, I'm saying Donald Trump shrugged his shoulders in part because Khashoggi wrote for the Washington Post. Donald Trump is known for holding grudges and for treating those he views as loyal differently. For instance, he suggests the federal government should de-fund disaster relief for California (didn't vote for him) wildfires while saying the government will give "A+" relief for an Alabama (did vote for him) tornado. He is a strictly transactional man. He's called out the Washington Post specifically and has looked into hurting Amazon as a way of punishing Bezos for owning the Post.
Or maybe he shrugged his shoulders because a foreign intelligence agent got killed by a foreign intelligence agency in a foreign country? Surely Trump, with U.S. and allied intelligence at his disposal, must have been made aware of Khashoggi's true nature.
Indeed, the German press was reporting that Khashoggi was an intelligence agent right away. It took the Post several weeks to finally admit as much, and still they've continued to spend millions of dollars (for example, on Super Bowl ads) to pretend Kashoggi was a real journalist.
Whatever you think of Trump, the Post deserves a great deal of contempt.
For the longest time Trump refused to even consider that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the killing, so that's a stretch.
> Surely Trump, with U.S. and allied intelligence at his disposal, must have been made aware of Khashoggi's true nature.
Trump famously discounts the conclusions of our intelligence agencies and can't pay attention to the presidential daily briefing unless his name is included in big bold letters. I think it's a stretch to say that if our intelligence agencies know one thing then it's a given Trump knows it (and believes it) as well.
If your definition of 'refused to even consider' is raised the issue directly with the leader of Saudi Arabia, well then, sure.
Could you give a specific example of this?
^ videos of Trump encouraging violence
Pray tell, what is the line between creating a dossier and conducting an investigation? When does a collection of evidence of a given suspects involvement (or non-involvement) become a dossier?
Although I don't believe it's relevant to this case, the unnamed source is wrong. The DHS absolutely is an intelligence agency. It even has an office (DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis) dedicated to synthesizing and disseminating the intelligence it collects. Intelligence collected by CBP is part of that mandate.
But flagging them so that all future border crossings result in automatic detainment for questioning can't be seen that way. I can only read that as surveillance and harassment.
I agree that it is surveillance, but you seem to forget that that's one of the things law enforcement does in an investigation.
so yes. keep complaining about your governments hard work to keep you safe, i'm sure the opposing forces will thank you later.
Are you suggesting blind fealty? If so, relevant.mp4: https://youtu.be/2HYIJahQKaI?t=189
Good individuals (or governments) can do very bad things. And bad individuals (or governments) can do very good things. When one immediately jumps to one conclusion or another, it leaves one open to being trivially manipulated. In political jargon - being made into a useful idiot [1].
In this case it was particularly bad since it wasn't "one" but rather entire groups of people either blindly supporting or blindly opposing the caravan based on political ideology. Comments running contrary to the groupthink tended to be simply attacked instead of considered.
Are there reasons to support the investigation into the caravan? Absolutely. Are there reasons to oppose it? Absolutely. But people are increasingly becoming simple minded on political issues and will simply go full-on one way or the other. This (to borrow from a peer comment) is what is "completely incompatible with functioning democracy."
The OC's statement came across as, "The government is doing this for you, so don't question it." To me, it didn't come across as including the facet of being pro/against the caravan in question, whatsoever, but - to the OC's credit - maybe it was there and I just missed it...
It is about how journalists reporting on it are marked for special treatment at the US border. I fail to see any complex pro/con political issue there. Free press is a constitutional right for a reason.
In this case it would likely have also been a politically destabilizing event in the US. You would have had far right vigilantes work to 'apprehend' the trespassing individuals which likely would spark 'anti-vigilante' action from far left individuals. Violence would have been inevitable due to the fact you have loonies on both ends meeting up with emotions flaring high. This could have been an organic action, but it could also have been driven by actors who would benefit from such instability.
In any case it would be absolutely remiss for the government to not investigate the funding, composition, and other aspects of the caravan. And on this front the journalists were/are not only witnesses but witnesses with video, photographic, and audio evidence as well as first person accounts. Like the article states, "[The investigators] said that I [journalist] was on the ground and they’re not, which I thought was really interesting.". The really important question is whether the investigation has gone from investigation to intimidation, which would be an issue.
So is the government doing their due diligence, or are they intimidating journalists? Perhaps it's even a bit of both. But I don't think this article is enough evidence to really determine one way or the other and so I think the wisest course of action would be to await further information.
[1] - https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-m...
As is the question of why they're fleeing Honduras in the first place. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/07/crisis-of-hond...
The caravan engaged in numerous criminal actions and likely conspired to engage in further criminal action at or within the US. Not investigating this would be remiss of the government, regardless of whether or not they find such actions justifiable. If we only investigated those we did not like or defended those we did, we'd have quite the broken system -- and, in fact, such systems were the norm for much of society's existence. Suffice to say such systems were not conducive to justness or fairness.
What does it have to do with putting journalists on a customs control list for special treatment when re-entering the US?
Einstein quote on people:
>Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
It's more than just a trust in rulers. I agree with Einstein. It's a complete subservience to them.
If you simply think that the same actions when done by a Western government are somehow more justifiable/right then you simply fell for some form of exceptionalism propaganda.
The very reason why we're supposed to be more free is because we're not supposed to do these things on principle, even if it makes the work of security officials more convenient to do them.
Oh the poor poor US government, with its trillions of dollars in resources and monopoly on the use of lethal force, stopped dead in their tracks by their eternal nemesis, the free citizen airing their opinion.
There are places you can go where governments blame journalists and other opinionated people for all their problems. There are even a few places where the government will go further than mere coercion and intimidation and actually murder people who speak out against it.
Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Maybe North Korea or the Congo.
Perhaps those countries are more to your liking?
But what's wrong with that? Americans have every right to be "demotivated" and seek change from the government. The government has zero authority to coerce people to support the government, or to prevent dissatisfied citizens from agitating for change through free speech.